Interesting ideas.
Have you thought about treating this more like flickr, iphoto, gmail does, with the use of tags? So rather than having all these different categories, you would submit a waymark into the orphan or generic category, with the option of making it private (nobody else can categorize it for you) or public (let the world at it!)
Then apply tags - predefined tags matching the current categories - to submit it to the group for consideration. Application of a tag would automatically ask for the other variables for that category (optional or not, separate discussion.)
This then allows easy cross listing of waymarks, which I would find extremely useful.
Example:
- I drive by a NY historical marker, see it's also a cobblestone building, a former school house, and a current Masonic Lodge.
- I take a picture of the sign and building, grab the coords, and go home.
- I submit my "orphan" (or generic) waymark, and in this case I mark it private as I don't want anybody else trying to categorize this for me
- I then apply the NY Historical marker tag, which asks me for the marker text, county, nearest town, etc ...
- I then apply the cobblestone building tag, which asks for the year of the building
- I then apply the former school house tag, and it asks me for the year, current use, and history of use
- I then apply the masonic lodge tag, and it asks me for the lodge number
That's much easier than typing up the same waymark 4 times, which in fact I did for this very case.
It would be interesting to be able to then look for waymarks that are tagged with different combinations of tags (I wonder how many NY Historical markers are at churches, or how many churches are cobblestone buildings, ...)
As far as stats, I'd be interesting in some sort of integration with geocaching.com; if anything, a simple stat that would show what normally looks like:
June 25 ChileHead (1772 found)
to
June 25 ChileHead (1772 gc, 250 wm, ...)